Wide SpeedCalc
Printouts
Does SpeedCalc work with the
Sideways program? I would
like the ability to print out a spreadsheet with lots of columns.

Stephen Forstein

Because SpeedCalc allows as many as
50 cells per horizontal row, many worksheets can't be printed on a
standard 80-column printer. For example, a 12-month worksheet with an
extra left cell for row titles and an extra right column cell for
totals will be 126 columns wide (if you use the default column width of
nine characters per cell). If you print this in the normal manner,
you'll find that each worksheet row wraps to one and a half lines on
the printout, making the sheet difficult to read. A crude solution
is to divide the completed sheet into several sections - each no more
than
80 columns wide - then print the sections separately and tape them
together. Condensed printing mode offers a more elegant solution, if
your printer supports it (Commodore printers do not). On most printers
this allows a 132-character line, enough for more than 14 default-width
cells across. You'll need to set the printer for condensed printing
before you run SpeedCalc, either by setting the appropriate DIP switch
on the printer or by sending the proper command codes. For example,
CHR$(15) works for Epson and Epsoncompatible printers. You may have to
use "transparent mode" to send this command through your interface. For
instance, Cardco interfaces require OPEN 4,4,4: PRINT#4,CHR$(15): CLOSE
4. With the Commodore
(January 1986) and Apple (February 1986) versions of SpeedCalc, the
commercial program Sideways does let you print your sheets vertically
down the page instead of horizontally across. This allows you to print
spreedsheets of virtually unlimited width. The only restriction is that
Sideways requires ASCII text files. For the Apple, just use Open
Apple-CTRL-P to print a copy of the sheet to disk. For the 64/128, the
procedure is slightly more complicated, since Sideways requires that
the data be in a SEQ (sequential) file and SpeedCalc prints a PRG
(program) file to disk. (The SpeedCalc article in the January issue is
in error when it states that printing to disk stores the data in a
sequential file.) To use Sideways with Commodore SpeedCalc, you must
print (not save) the sheet to disk, then convert the printed data file
from PRG format to SEQ format. The short program below performs this
conversion: